There currently exist “pre-paid” telephone cards that allow a customer to purchase a desired amount of long-distance telephone time from a particular telephone service provider. These pre-paid telephone cards are often sold by dealers such as convenience stores or wireless phone stores. Pre-paid telephone cards are also often sold in airports. Vending machines for selling pre-paid telephone cards also have been developed. Each of these pre-paid telephone cards has a specific monetary denomination. For example, a customer could purchase a $10 card, a $20 card, or a $100 card. These pre-paid telephone cards are sold by particular telephone service providers such as AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc. A customer could, for example, buy a $20 MCI card, which would entitle him or her to $20 worth of long-distance calling service provided by MCI. These cards are referred to as “pre-paid” because the customer purchases the long-distance time before he or she actually places the call. This is in contrast to the more typical post-pay service that most telephone customers use with the telephone in their residence or office. With post-pay service, customers are sent a bill on a periodic basis. The customer pays for calls that have already been made, rather than calls that will be made in the future.
Frequently, the pre-paid telephone cards that are sold by dealers or vending machines are of the “scratch-off” type. After the customer purchases a card, he or she can scratch off a layer of material which reveals a personal identification number (PIN). The layer of scratch-off material hides the PIN from customers browsing in the store who have not purchased the card. After a customer purchases a card and scratches off the layer of material, the customer can then use the card to place a long-distance call. When the customer wishes to place a long-distance call, he or she dials a special number provided by the telephone service provider. The customer then enters the PIN written on the card. The long distance provider automatically debits the charge of the call from an account associated with the PIN.
As an example, a customer could purchase a $10 MCI card. After the customer rubs off the layer of material, a PIN number 129384348764 is revealed. When the customer wishes to place a long-distance call, the customer dials an MCI access number. The customer then enters PIN 129384348764. The long-distance carrier, MCI, identifies the PIN and recognizes that there is $10 worth of credit in this account. If the customer places a call which lasts 5 minutes and costs 4$, MCI will debit the account so that $6 remains. The next time the customer places a call using that PIN number, the system will find that $6 remains in the account associated with that PIN.
One problem with these pre-paid phone cards is that the cards present a major inventory headache for dealers. There is a lot of work and expense associated with maintaining a filled inventory of cards. First, the dealer or vending machine operator has to predict which cards will be in demand and determine how many cards of each denomination to order for each of various providers. The dealer then has to pay for the desired inventory of cards up front, which requires a significant cash outlay. The dealer then has to keep track of how many cards are left in stock for each service provider and of each different monetary denomination, and determine when to order a new batch of cards. All of these costs associated with filled inventory can be time consuming and expensive for dealers.
Another problem is that these pre-paid telephone cards are especially vulnerable to theft, loss, and other inventory “shrinkage.” Because the cards are small, it is easy for a shoplifter to pocket a card unnoticed. Since these cards have a high value to them and are so easy to pocket, dealers which sell these cards are extremely vulnerable to inventory shrinkage.
Vending card machines have been proposed which store personal identification numbers (PINs) in a memory in the machine. A customer can then purchase a pre-paid telephone PIN by inserting cash into the machine. Once the cash has been inserted, a PIN and usage instructions stored within the machine memory are printed upon a blank card that is dispensed to the customer. The machine can replenish its stock of PINs when the memory runs out of PINs or on a periodic basis by accessing a remote store of PINs via a modem.
The problem with these vending machines is that there are still significant costs associated with inventorying the PINs. The PINs are retained in a memory in the machine which has a similar effect to storing cards. Once a PIN has been stored in the memory of a particular machine, that PIN becomes unavailable to be used by any other dealer, even if the PIN is never purchased. Additionally, if the machine were to break, or the memory were to be erased, there is a problem determining who is responsible for paying for the PINs that were contained in the memory. Additionally, decisions must still be made how many PINs to store in memory, what monetary denominations to store in memory, and for which providers to store PINs in memory. Therefore, there are still significant inventory costs associated with storing the PINs in the vending machine. Additionally, these proposed vending machines do not provide consumers the ability to obtain a PIN from the convenience of their homes or offices.
Another system which has been proposed is a web site which is accessed over the Internet. A customer can go to this web site and purchase pre-paid telephone service. A PIN is then e-mailed to the customer's e-mail address. The problem with this service is that a customer must be able to access his or her email account in order to obtain the PIN. Additionally, e-mail is often insecure. If a computer hacker is “listening in” on an individual's email, then the hacker can steal the PIN and use it for his own purposes. Additionally, if a customer is purchasing a PIN in a convenience store or an airport, the customer will probably not have access to his or her e-mail account. The customer may have to wait to return to his or her home or office to access the PIN. Additionally, e-mail can sometimes be slow and it may take hours or days to retrieve the message from the customers Internet Service Provider (ISP).
A system addressing these shortcomings is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,130 (the “'130 patent”), which is assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The '130 patent describes a secure system capable of providing PINs for pre-paid goods and services conveniently to customers. The system of the '130 patent advantageously relieves dealers such as convenience stores and vending machine operators from the costs associated with maintaining a filled inventory of pre-paid cards and PINs. In addition, the system allows consumers to select from a wide-range of providers and monetary denominations without requiring the dealer to maintain a large filled inventory of cards or predict which type of cards or PINs to order. Specifically, after a customer purchases a pre-paid amount of a good or service, the customer receives a personal identification number (PIN) capable of being downloaded in real-time over a network such as the Internet. After the customer receives the PIN, the customer can then use this PIN at any convenient time to access the desired good or service.
Although the system of the '130 patent provides a convenient mechanism for establishing a pre-paid account, it would also be desirable to conveniently be able to “recharge” or otherwise replenish an account for pre-paid services prior to or upon exhaustion of the initial allocation of services. For example, considering again the case in which $10 of pre-paid long distance service has been purchased from a telecommunications carrier, it is usually possible to replenish this type of account by calling an 800 number and providing a credit card number to a service representative or automated system. However, this approach tends to be burdensome to the customer and requires expenditures on the part of the telecommunications carrier. Perhaps more significantly, many users of pre-paid telecommunications services accounts have experienced credit difficulties and thus may not have a valid credit card available for such replenishment purposes.
At least one pre-paid account replenishment scheme has been proposed which utilizes the existing financial network for credit card transactions, but which does not require the account holder to actually possess a valid credit card. That is, the account holder is provided the opportunity to make payments in the form of cash or the equivalent at a merchant point-of-sale. These payments are then posted to an intermediary account, from which payment may subsequently be made on behalf of the account holder to the applicable pre-paid services vendor. Unfortunately, this approach disadvantageously requires the establishment of an “intermediary” account for the account holder distinct from the account maintained with the pre-paid services vendor. Moreover, this approach does not contemplate the establishment of a single account through which pre-paid accounts with multiple vendors of pre-paid services could be conveniently replenished.